Brands, Bands and Hands
January 24, 2008
Will a brand makeover hide the cracks at EMI?
What?: EMI has sat too long in its old school music industry easy chair, comfortably resting not only on its laurels but also on top of a £1.3B copyright catalogue it had hidden under the mattress for a rainy day. Suddenly it’s pouring (EMI lost £288.5M in 2007) and Terra Firma is standing at the door, briefcase and umbrella in hand, ready to bail it out. Read more
The Pepsi Challenge
January 24, 2008
Bowling for giveaways
What?: Pepsi is donning its shoulder pads and barging past with a massive download giveaway and ad campaign Read more
This charming fan
January 24, 2008
The more you adore me the closer I get
What?: Morrissey is to release a Greatest Hits package spanning his 20-year solo career. The album follows on from previous greatest hits compilation in the 1990s such as the EMI album Suedehead. Read more
Fantasy festival
January 24, 2008
Adidas pitches its virtual tent down under
What?: Adidas and Vice magazine have teamed up on a promotion in Australia that lets users create their own virtual music festival via a pixel graphics game. Read more
Your flexible friend
January 24, 2008
It’s a Barbie suite of symphonies
What?: Introducing Barbie At The Symphony, a new programme aimed at exposing classical music to a young audience – from 3-year-olds upwards. Read more
Zune is going to the dogs
January 24, 2008
Barking up the wrong tree
What?: This ad shows the exploits of the first dog in space, but quite frankly it’s going to take more than a bowl of Chum and a tickle on the belly to get Apple’s iPod to roll over. By all accounts the Zune player is a reasonable piece of kit, but Microsoft seems to continually skirt round this with surreal campaigns. Tell us why we should get one; throw us a bone here, Mr. Gates.
American Idol in hot water
January 24, 2008
Not everyone’s a wiener
What?: US hot dog company Oscar Mayer and American Idol are asking people to Sing The Jingle to win tickets to the 2008 American Idol Finale. Entrants, who seem to be predominately children, can upload videos to the website or record their performance in a ‘Wienermobile’ (so very wrong). A drop of 4M viewers, however, means American Idol is certainly not a wiener anymore.
Scrawl of sound
January 24, 2008
Phone lost amid kaleidoscope
What?: Sony Ericsson, in order to promote its latest line of music-enabled phones, has created a kaleidoscopic website featuring a number of band- and user-created montages. You can even create your own efforts to win a Walkman W910i. This updates the old doodling whilst-on-the-phone concept, except Sony appears to have forgotten the phone part here.
White house music
January 22, 2008
Music branding gets political
What?: When the brand you are promoting just may end up running a medium-to-large country, music takes on a whole new meaning. The six main candidates for November’s US presidential elections are promoting themselves with a selection of official and unofficial music alignments. Read more
River island records
January 22, 2008
Dress like a music icon
What?: High-street retailer River Island is teaming up with NME.com to promote its clothing range. The Stuff We Love section will give fashion advice on how to look like style icons from the music world. Read more
